All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.
- Source
- Persuasion, ch. 23 (vol. 2, ch. 11)
- Written
- 1817
About this quotation
Anne Elliot says this to Captain Harville in an argument about whether men or women stay constant in love longer. Captain Wentworth overhears it from across the room, and it prompts the letter that ends the novel’s long separation.